Dino Attack RPG/Reception
Since its release on July 1, 2005, Dino Attack RPG has met much reception. Commercial Reception Obviously, being a free-to-play game on a free-to-join forum, Dino Attack RPG has no commercial reception that can be measured in profit. Therefore, this commercial reception is instead measured based upon the RPG's number of players and posts. Upon its release, Dino Attack RPG was met with overwhelming popularity. In its first week, it gained a total of 223 posts from twelve members. This had beaten the previous record for most posts in a LEGO General Discussion RPG, which had been held by the popular Alpha Team: Mission Deep Freeze RPG with 141 posts in its first week. In its first year, Dino Attack RPG was a commercial success, with a post count that had expanded to a total of 3654 posts. However, by this point, the novelty had worn off, and now Dino Attack RPG had to compete with the very popular Exo-Force: Battle for Sentai Mountain RPG. In its second year, Dino Attack RPG had only accumulated 311 posts, bringing the total to 3965. Most members of the RPG had since moved on. Besides PeabodySam, the only active members of the RPG were Chronicler of Ko-Koro, Metty the Black Wizard, and the recently-joined Atton Rand. By December 2007, although TakunuvaC01 was posting more frequently, the RPG was nearly dead. Realizing this and fueled by the death of Dino Attack RPG's sibling, Pirates RPG, PeabodySam made a commitment to make sure that the Dino Attack RPG would not share the Pirates RPG's fate. With the help of Atton Rand and Chronicler of Ko-Koro, the RPG was kept alive long enough to meet a new member: Tahuninja. The activity of these members added another 347 posts to the RPG by the end of its third year. Following Tahuninja, several other members joined the RPG, including Enter Fishstick, imperial officer, and Toa Antrakha. This revived interest in Dino Attack RPG, combined with the surprisingly popular mission to the Goo Caverns, led to Dino Attack RPG becoming active once more. Even with a Time Slip that deleted all posts from September 2008 to March 2009, the RPG met commercial success that it had not seen since its first year. On May 6, 2009, Dino Attack RPG reached a total of 5000 posts. The 5000th post was made by PeabodySam, and was a detailed retrospective of the RPG. In its fourth year, the RPG had gained over 1121 posts, not even counting the months of posts that were lost in the Time Slip. Dino Attack RPG continued to grow in activity and popularity, up until the BZPower forum update of April 2011, at which point the RPG had accumulated a total of 8924 posts and was the oldest living RPG in the LEGO General Discussion subforum. When the BZPower forums returned in October 2011, a brand new LEGO RPG subforum was introduced, but the BZPower staff considered it a low priority to establish the forum's review process and would not approve any new RPGs in the meantime. It was not until March 15, 2012, that Dino Attack RPG was finally continued as Dino Attack: At War's End, with no new members or posts during the 11-month-long downtime. Dino Attack: At War's End, advertising itself as the final chapter of a long-running RPG in its title, only attracted a single new player who did not write any IC posts. Regardless, it retained most of its preexisting player base from April 2011, who devotedly continued to write for the RPG. The RPG was concluded on December 21, 2012, with At War's End having accumulated a total of 1993 posts. On PeabodySam's YouTube channel, VezonWireless, Dino Attack: Legacy and Dino Attack in a Nutshell are the top two most-viewed videos, with upwards of 300,000 views on the former and 48,000 views on the latter as of July 2016. No other Dino Attack RPG-related video has come close to reaching these high numbers. Version 1.2 of the Dino Attack RPG Downloadable Archive was downloaded 486 times between August 23, 2014 and June 1, 2016. Version 1.3 was downloaded 316 times between June 1, 2016 and July 1, 2017. As of April 9, 2018, version 2.0 has been downloaded 116 times. Critical Reception Despite the largely negative reception of the LEGO Dino Attack toyline on BZPower at the time of its release, Dino Attack RPG has received mostly positive critical reception. Many members, including TakunuvaC01 and Andrewnuva199, have praised Dino Attack RPG for its storyline. According to these members, what kept Dino Attack interesting was how PeabodySam had expanded the storyline of LEGO Dino Attack into an entire universe, thus enhancing the setting. The framing story is commonly considered to be what kept Dino Attack RPG going, supported by the fact that after the RPG's novelty wore off, the revived interest in the RPG's fourth year was likely the result of the storylines of the Dino Attack Power Station and the Goo Caverns. Some members have expressed complaints over its system of "Dictatorial Promotion", which they believed allowed PeabodySam to keep a member a Standard Agent for as long as he wished. They also felt that this meant that promotion happened whenever PeabodySam felt like it, rather than there being an actual consistent formula to achieving Elite Agent status. In the BZPower topic "Best RPG?", Benton Kabrinsky and Jackson Lake both nominated Dino Attack RPG. Jackson Lake cited the RPG's long life as proof that it is "unquestionably the best".Best RPG? (dead link) Both members also nominated Dino Attack RPG in another topic, "Most Significant Topic Of All Time?". On the new BZPower forums, At War's End was cited by Benton Kabrinsky as the only thing keeping him on BZPower in 2012.Where On Bzp Do You Spend Your Time And Why? Jackson Lake stated that Dino Attack RPG was their #1 favorite memory of BZPower.Favorite BZPower Memories The Brickspider Bot v1.0 was cited as one of Jackson Lake's favorite villains in the BZPower topic "Baddest Bad Guy". Aster Oid's line "Droids that drink oil and eat batteries? That's like Minifigs who drink blood and eat hearts!" proved to be popular among RPG players. It has been quoted by Jackson Lake numerous times in their signature, personal statement, and various BZPower topics. It was expected that not all of the RPG players would agree with the Dino Attack RPG timeline, in which most LEGO themes occur in their respective years of release. However, it was not expected that several debates would arise as a result of this controversial timeline. Some players of the RPG continuously argued with PeabodySam over the timeline, accusing it of being completely unrealistic and making little sense. PeabodySam has explained that his views of the LEGO Planet is that it is not restricted to an Earth-like timeline, which would restrict the creativity of a LEGO planet by forcing it to follow Earth rules. Nonetheless, this issue was brought up time and time again. As a result, the date of Pirates RPG was not specified in that RPG, and neither Pirates RPG nor Alpha Team RPG: Ogel's Last Stand allow for much contact with other themes. In later years, imperial officer has rescinded his criticisms of the timeline, saying that he now understands why PeabodySam chose not to follow a realistic timeline. While they existed for the entirety of Alpha Team: Mission Deep Freeze RPG and much of Dino Attack RPG without a problem, FMB-Bots have become a controversial issue among several members of Dino Attack RPG, such as imperial officer and Toa Ling, starting around the LEGO Island story arc. As the FMB-Bots are an army that Frozeen can potentially summon at any time, they are seen as a product of extreme god-modding. However, even before these concerns were raised, PeabodySam had already seen the FMB-Bots as potential god-modding, and as a result he refrained from using them for a long time. Their final role in Dino Attack RPG is a mostly "off-camera" suicide mission designed to eliminate them for the rest of the RPG, done in order to please members such as imperial officer. With the exception of PBB, FMB-Bots also do not appear in Alpha Team RPG: Ogel's Last Stand. After pages were written for Dino Attack RPG on the website TV Tropes, which players such as Andrewnuva199 and Jackson Lake hoped would attract new fans, the RPG has instead become a frequent subject of criticism for its large number of listed tropes, particularly among those who hold disdain for the website. In the Project A.F.T.E.R. Forums topic "TV Tropes is dead to me", Coiler dismissed the RPG for being a darkfic with four pages of tropes, and Matthew Garcia91390123 responded that it sounded terrible from the description, which has since been updated in response to these criticisms.TV Tropes is dead to me. In the RPGnet Forums topic "necroPettiness TV Tropes and Idioms", in response to Rolzup being irked by finding Whateley Universe listed as an example on many trope pages, Underscore wrote "I'll see you Whatley sic and raise you Dino Attack RPG."[necroPettiness TV Tropes and Idioms] On a Tumblr blog devoted to criticizing TV Tropes, iHodor accused the RPG of being horribly shilled despite its obscurity, noting that he had never before heard of the RPG despite being a BZPower member.Can we mention how badly the Dino Attack RPG gets... In the Kiwi Farms topic "TV Tropes community", Abethedemon claimed that Dino Attack RPG had the worst fanbase on TV Tropes, having been baffled by its existence.TV Tropes community PeabodySam has been disappointed by the negative reception from TV Tropes, explaining that while he is not opposed to criticism, he finds that frequent complaints about Dino Attack RPG being on too many trope pages do not offer any constructive feedback. In contrast, Brikman McStudz and that guy from that show do not mind the negative reception, claiming that there is no such thing as bad publicity.But Seriously Though.TV Tropes: Was It Worth It? Despite the negative reception from TV Tropes, Dino Attack RPG has also managed to find some new fans since its closure. This includes the well-known brickfilm animator Behind The Camera of Mustache Maniacs Film Co., who was impressed by the RPG's wiki and soundtrack. Due to being the most-viewed videos, Dino Attack: Legacy and Dino Attack in a Nutshell also have the highest amount of "likes" on the VezonWireless YouTube channel. As of March 2016, they have a rating of about 80-85% in terms of the "like" to "dislike" ratio. Most comments on the videos tend to be positive, while the occasional negative criticisms tend to be aimed at the hard-to-follow story, which is often confusing for those who are not familiar with Dino Attack RPG. The short stories and Expanded Universe received positive reviews from former Dino Attack RPG players. Legacy Just as Dino Attack RPG and other contemporary RPGs had been inspired by Alpha Team: Mission Deep Freeze RPG, Dino Attack RPG itself became the inspiration for many LEGO RPGs that followed, including Alpha Team RPG: Ogel's Last Stand and Alien Conquest RPG. In Space Police RPG, the respective primary characters of Benton Kabrinsky and Toa Antrakha, Benton "Shades" Kabrinsky and Andrew-124, are descendants of Dino Attack veterans. It is implied that this is a reference to their respective Dino Attack RPG primary characters, Benton "B" Kabrinsky and Leonidas "Fullmetal" Spartana (whose name was originally Andrew before being retconned). Alpha Team RPG: Ogel's Last Stand was partly inspired by the desire to explore the time skip between Alpha Team: Mission Deep Freeze RPG and Dino Attack RPG, and featured numerous characters who made previous appearances in the latter, including Zenna and David Norman. Zachary Virchaus and Minerva Fabello also made later appearances in LEGO Universe RPG. While it was tempting to make many of these kinds of references and connect other RPGs to Dino Attack RPG, it became something that was actively discouraged by PeabodySam, Jackson Lake, and TakunuvaC01, who argued that references to Dino Attack RPG risked alienating those not familiar with the RPG and any new RPG should be able to stand on its own merit without being saddled down by the heavy preexisting canon of older RPGs. In February 2014, Mustache Maniacs Film Co. officially announced a partnership with Dino Attack RPG, with plans to release a Project U-Build Play Set Adventures line based upon the RPG. This also officially inducted Dino Attack RPG into the Project U canon, and characters such as Wallace Bishop and Robert Nicholas will appear in upcoming brickfilms, including Project U's grand finale Legends of the Universe. The appearance of Wallace Bishop in the short brickfilm Rift marked the first appearance of Dino Attack RPG canon in a work not created by any of the RPG's players. Later, the partnership led to the announcement of DINO ATTACK: Saga of a Conflict, a graphic novel adaptation of the RPG. Dino Attack RPG's tenth anniversary was celebrated by the release of Dino Attack in a Nutshell: Epilogue. Mustache Maniacs Film Co. also posted a celebratory blog post in recognition of the anniversary, during which they unveiled a work-in-progress page for Saga of a Conflict and the current set list for the Project U-Build Play Set Adventures line.Happy Ten Years, Dino Attack RPG! One year later, on the eleventh anniversary, Mustache Maniacs Film Co. released the first comic pages and playsets of Saga of a Conflict.Studio Update: We Have our Sensei Wu and Dareth! References Category:Dino Attack RPG